If Buildings Could Speak: Part One
An ode to old buildings, and the stories they hold. Originally written in 2018, still one of my favorite research and writing pieces to date. Here's to New York, NY.
It is December in New York City, and here I sit, in a Starbucks on 77th and Broadway, looking out over the sparkling trees and just beyond the bustle of Fairway Market, the spires of the grand Ansonia Hotel. The elegant building evokes images of another New York City, full of horse-drawn carriages, the old money of the Upper West Side, the clip of heels along cobblestoned Broadway and Fifth Avenue just on the other side of Central Park.
In the present it melds the past with more modern amenities of New York City; elegant stonework above rusting air conditioning units and automatic doors in lieu of a well-suited doorman, his crisp white gloves, and the smell of his aftershave opening a golden bound door into the past.
When I first arrived in New York City, it was a miserably hot day in August, and the heat rose off the pavement in shimmering waves, sweat dripping down exposed skin even in the briefest attempts at stimulative activity. We double parked along the narrow street and began to unload my things into the nearby Saint Agnes’ Residence for Women, located adjacent to the side entrance of The Ansonia’s main lobby. It took a few moments for me to actually take in my surroundings, but when I finally stopped to look up, I had to crane my neck to see the upper half of the building.
In that moment I found myself feeling something I would feel a lot while living in New York City. Compared to the glimmering skyscrapers and the bustling crowds, well-dressed New Yorkers with their spectacular sense of direction — I felt out of place and incredibly small.
I’d lived in Boston during my high-school years, so I’d experienced the city before, but coming from small-town Oregon, I have to admit, it wasn’t until I moved to the East Coast that I realized how important some stories can be to the identity of the people who choose to live here. I had never been around so much history or lived on a coast that genuinely clung to the past as if it would suddenly become irrelevant without consistent reminders.
Moving to New York City at the age of 20, there is this immense need to prove to everyone around that you can not only keep up with the pacing but that you really do belong in one of the greatest cities in the world. It’s easy to get lost in the ‘greatness’ of everyone around you, everyone who has ever been, lived, loved, or created something of worth in New York City.
It was hard to silence the little voice in my head that harped away two immutable truths: that there truly seems to be a story in everything here, and everything has already been done by someone else. Somehow I soldiered on, writing my own present amongst the ghosts of New York.
As my New York adventure began, wherever I turned in a five-block radius of my apartment and Broadway Avenue, there was always The Ansonia. It caught my eye as I toted groceries past the flower mart, from nearly any coffee shop along the avenue, and many moments in between. On the roof of my own apartment, you could catch a glimpse into the lighted windows, the glamour of its residents finely tuned with red velvet curtain dressings and lots and lots of brilliant throw pillows.
Within a few short weeks of moving here, The Ansonia Hotel had become a beacon of the past that I wanted desperately to understand. Perhaps some small part of me felt that understanding this building and its history would bring me closer to the heart of New York, its people, and a feeling of belonging, even if I didn’t yet.
I began to make a game of examining the haunts of the building at different times of the day. I was intrigued by how it seemed to extend in the sunlight, the copper terraces catching the glare and sending sunspots dancing across the pavement below. In the moonlight, it looked like a castle or cathedral — some kind of reverence-worthy figure, and in that famous New York rain, I was grateful for the scaffolding along the storefronts, feeling somehow protected by a building I still knew very little about.
Most big and mysterious features of your life, become infinitely less frightening and distant the more you familiarize yourself with them.
So, in an attempt to challenge at least one of the geographic aspects of my new life here that made me feel small and somewhat ignorant, I prepared myself for a deep informational dive into the famed and historical hotel of the Upper West Side.
Starting with the best of architectural intentions, The Ansonia Hotel was the brainchild of William Earle Dodge Stokes, a copper heir and shareholder of The Ansonia Clock Company. With the help of French Architect Paul E. Duboy, Stokes planned for The Ansonia Hotel to be the talk of the town. Upon its groundbreaking in 1904, the final costs of building The Ansonia Hotel rose 800% over the projected budget, totaling $6 million dollars1.
Officially finished in 1913, it would be the “grandest residential hotel in Manhattan,” with a few major firsts to its name; it was the first New York City hotel with air-conditioning, achieved by pumping frozen brine through the pipes to cool the surrounding air ducts. It had its own pneumatic tubing system, delivering messages from the tenants and hotel guests to the staff, and was one of the earliest experiments with metropolitan rooftop farming, housing nearly 500 chickens, some ducks, six goats, and a small bear2.
However, these inventive amenities did little to detract from the already rampant reputation of Stokes at the time of The Ansonia’s opening, consistently profiled for his salacious love life, multiple marriages, and frequent cases of infidelity to his, often, teenage brides. Perhaps it was Stokes’ scandalous personality that attracted a certain type of person to the hotel, perhaps it was merely coincidence, but no one could guess, looking at the limestone turrets of the building, how many things would come to pass in such a beautiful building.
Straight out of a stint at Sing Sing prison, Al Adams, the shady millionaire nicknamed the “Policy King,” for his involvement in the New York Numbers Racket, moves into The Ansonia. Publicly welcomed by W.E.D Stokes, Adams brings with him an influx of shady characters who helped to fuel the underground gambling scene, among other illegal activities.
Only two years into his residency he, rather suddenly, committed suicide in suite #1579. The cause? A bullet to the head. Many papers speculated that his suicide was actually a murder due to the fact that Stokes and Adams had been seen, on numerous occasions, arguing about the amount of gambling debts owed to Stokes by Adams. Regardless of the rumor mill, the coroner officially ruled it a suicide, but the incident became a pivotal moment in the widespread belief that The Ansonia Hotel is, to this day, haunted by the Ghost of Al Adams (along with a few other residents who met their end in the building, one from an eighth story window.)
Hauntings alone did not stop the continued maelstrom of famous and eclectic residents from signing leases, likely in part due to the fantastic location and large reputation of The Ansonia by this point in time. You know what they say; location, location, location.
One such celebrated resident was none other than Charles Arnold “Chick” Gandil, the first baseman for the Chicago White Sox. On September 21st, Gandil, along with a group of his teammates met with Jewish Mob Kingpin and Racketeer Arnold Rothstein3 to rig the 1919 Baseball World Series. To the sweet, sweet tune of $80,000 dollars, each player in the room agreed to throw the upcoming games against the Cincinnati Reds, ensuring Rothstein’s gambling syndicate a large sum of money upon the “surprising” game results4. Once the “Black Sox” scandal was exposed, all of the players involved were banned from the Major Leagues of baseball and The Ansonia Hotel was once again dragged through the mud, breeding more negativity in the sphere of public opinion.
Only one year later, Babe Ruth moved into the hotel when his contract with the Boston Red Sox was traded to the New York Yankees. He often delighted the other guests by walking around in only a very short, scarlet silk bathrobe, annoying others with his incessant and very bad saxophone playing.
Coincidentally, the height of The Ansonia’s scandalous reputation was also the height of Her popularity — things would swiftly go downhill from there.
Stay tuned for part two, I promise She’s worth coming back for.
Considering the inflation rate, that would equal roughly $152,815,757.58 dollars by today’s standards.
According to Stokes’ son, in 1907, the New York City Health Department shut down the rooftop farm. All of the animals were released into Central Park Park and lived, hopefully, happily ever after.
For the record, Rothstein’s involvement in the scandal has never been confirmed although he has been connected to the scandal since news first broke.
The famous author F. Scott Fitzgerald based one of the characters in “The Great Gatsby,” off of Rothstein, citing the semi-fictional racketeer Meyer Wolfsheim as, “the man who fixed the 1919 world series.”